PPMS opts for the 'human touch'

CXA Insurance Plc. Please dial 1 for claims, 2 for complaints, 3 for enquiries, 4....

"Oh it's that irritating voice service sysstem that insists on my punching one key after and another and then puts me on hold!" protests a policyholder in the UK, serviced by one of the numerous call centres set up in India.

People in the age bracket of 45 and beyond are not very comfortable dealing with interactive voice response (IVR) systems. When it comes to relating the complaints, their preference is for the human touch.

Prudential Process Management Services (PPMS), that servicing Prudential Plc's UK customers today, will switch to non-IVR. A customer would interact with a human voice directly without having to go through the hassles of IVR.

"This is a business sensitive move to switch over to the human voice. We find that people over the age of 45 do not like to interact with a machine and prefer talking directly with an individual," said R K Ragan, managing director, PPMS.

Switching to non-IVR will result in a huge training cost for PPMS as individual 'agents' servicing the UK clientele will now need to not only learn and understand various products across life, pension and investments, hey will also need to learn all the processes involved when dealing with customer services "" right from claims handling to policy enquiries and underwriting skills.

"Our employees will need to be multi-skilled across all product and process segments, and we are confident that we will be able to do it," said Ragan.

Last month PPMS launched its 2005 business plan "" PPMS Plus. The objective is to enhance the financial strength and brand value as well as reduce the risk and improve the service for the customers of Prudential Plc of UK, said Ragan. This is as opposed to most other BPOs in India, whose targets are to enhance productivity, reduce costs and retain staff.